Nigerian Troops Kill Nine Suspected Islamist Gunmen in Kano

March 21 (Bloomberg) -- Nine gunmen suspected of belonging
to Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamist group were shot dead by troops
in the northern state of Kano after they attacked a police
station and a bank, the military said.

“They used improvised explosive devices to bomb these
places,” Brigadier General Iliyasu Abba, military commander in
Kano city, told reporters today. “We quickly mobilized our men
to the scene and that was how we successfully got them.” Two
more gunmen were arrested, he said.

Authorities in Africa’s top oil producer blame Boko Haram,
which draws inspiration from Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, for
a surge of violence in the mainly Muslim north and in Abuja, the
capital, in which more than 1,000 people have died since 2009.
The group claimed responsibility for multiple blasts and attacks
in the city of Kano on Jan. 20 that killed at least 256 people,
according to the Civil Rights Congress.

Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is a
sin,” recently made contact with the government for peace talks
through an Islamic leader, Abul Qaqa, a spokesman said
yesterday. The initiative was called off after the group decided
the government wasn’t sincere, he said.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with more than 160
million people, is roughly split between a mainly Muslim north
and a predominantly Christian south. Boko Haram poses a more
serious threat to the country than the 1967-1970 Biafra civil
war, President Goodluck Jonathan said on Jan. 8.